The Orb of Delusion
Overview Largest module I have written at this point in time, highly experimental in some parts, worked in some places fell flat in others when we played through it. Followed on from Paladin Orders and their signature items, might have melted a few brains. Delon the mage had just finished Telling his life story and what he knew about Paladin orders and as the party was leaving his house a bloodied and beaten man came up the path and told a tale of a strange glowing orb he had found, sounding strangely simmilar to the Orb in Delon's story and how some bandits had stolen it as he was bringing it to Delon The Party set off to retrieve the orb from the bandit camp. This was based on the bandit camp slightly north of the turn off to the Old wilderness road, the path taken to see the Druids in N2- The Forest Oracle and was played exactly the same way until such time as the leaders hut was entered, where a large man had a very experimental gun pointed at the door, sort of a person operated trap for whoever breached the doorway first. The back of the gun explodes injuring its operator, but it also damages the person in its firing line like an arqebus, somewhere between 1 and unlimited damage depending on dice rolls. After the gun shot there was combat with the gun man and then the room was searched reveling a very long ladder into the earth. At the bottom of the ladder was a tunnel and at the end of this tunnel a circular room that seemed to be unser construction, in this room was a crazy wererat wearing a silver tiara that had seen better days, he welcomed the party to his throne room and showed them the first item for his royal treasury, a chest that matched the hunters description, slowly he opened the chest and the lining matched the description as did the red glowing pulsating orb the chest contained, everything went red the party collapsed. Then the Delusions were played out. About the Delusions The delusions were the core part of this modlue and occured simultaneous with them being randomly applied to each player, as I was writing it I was unsure at first of what order the first two should be played in, and in the end decided that maximum effect could be obtained by having them wake up in the completed throne room as Ratmen themselves, the final order of play of the delsuion (and their names) Are in their own sections. The were varied in nature The first two staying within the D&D world, the third they were playing characters playing D&D with one of the players as the DM character, the fourth was just completely unrelated. Upon completion of each individual character's delusion they woke up, disoriented, this happened at more or less the same time, within seconds of each other. The Ratskiteers After looking into the orb and passing outthe party members came too, the throne room was now copmpleted there was now a large throne, the Ratman King now wearing a large silver crown and dressed in regal robes enquired if the part felt smarter after looking into his Orb of Ensmartination he demanded that the party strip out of their dirty clothes and their naked rat bodies were now on display. He then dressed the party up in costumes somewhat like one would imagine the Musketeers would wear with big floppy hats etc. and sent them on a special mission to assasinate the king of Tausia in Uliamar Prime. Each player was then random assigned a Ratskiteer character the names were a combination of rat and one of the Muskiteer characters, unfortunately two of the three muskiteers had names rather close together when you started jamming rat into the name so the fourth one was called Bob instead. Each rat had a special skill that could be used to infiltrate the keep or gather information, eventually they entered via the deluxe dungeons, where they met a Rat in an iron mask who convinced them to instead talk with the King of Tausia instead of killing him, this was the correct course of action and it ended the delusion when they met the king. This was a good one to start on becasue it played off what was happening just before they collapsed. Derendal had this delusion, so was the first to wake up back in the slightly constructed throneroom. Mattis Alberg got to play the rat with the fine selection of cheeses in his inventory, a funny coincidence since Mattis Alberg is the gourmet of the real party. Dwarfmas Revisited Set 100 years after the Dwarfmas module it tells the story of another party of adventurers assulting the Lair of Santa Claws when it once again arose from Pole Lake to the north of Ironvale, after the failure of the players Party to defeat Santa Claws during their attempt. The premis of this delusion was that one of the players accepted Santa Claws' offer of a suit being rapidly turned into an undead minion, some party members followed their lead and some others hesitated, the ones that hesitated fled in terror when they saw what putting the suit on had done to their friends. During the Orb of Delusion Module, Mattis Alberg's Player drew Dwarfmas Revisited delusion, this was fitting because he was not present during the original Dwarmas sesion and his party members tried to get him to wear the suit that Santa Claws offered at the time, but since this would have killed his character I over rulled this, stating that it was out of character, Mattis Alberg stated that it was made of low quality woolen fabric and was therefor only fit for a peasant to wear. The party members that fled were hunted down and turned into undead minions also. Who chose what was randomly decided making sure that some party members accepted and some fled, those that willingly took suits were rewarded with their very own Bottomless Teacup and left with a degree of free will, those that fled were mindless minions and did not get a teacup. Players got to do some minion tasks like shoot a heap of crossbow bolts at the invaders, that lead to some teacup swapping when a mindless minion got more hits in than one of the free willed ones. The D&D Game ...To Be Continued The Fantasy Writer ...To Be Continued Final thoughs This was an a experiment and for the most part played out pretty well, the final delusion was probably too abstract and fell pretty flat, possably this was too dependant on who got what characters, maybe it was badly thought out, perhaps some extra instructions would had been a good idea, at any rate that section needs by the most work should anyone else wish to use the module. From a world building point of view it was interesting, the first two gave some glimpse of some possable futures, only time will tell if they are accurate predictions of the future or not. A character from the Fantasy Writer delusion Grugtor the Barbarian has since shown up in game, I think this was an unexpected turn of events. If you would like a copy of this or any of my other modules, please contact me on zaloenis@gmail.com with your request